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Our entire set for Black North was optimised and packaged up, which we then handed over to them and they seemed pretty happy with it. At our most recent meeting we were told that a few more blocks of ice were needing modelled and textured…

Below are a few images I looked at to see how ice would react to light (is it transparent, is it solid) and how the surface of the object could look: scratches, cracks etc…

I then used the tutorial below as a guide/starting point for texturing the ice model, the results were achieved by using a ramp shader and noise map:

Starting off in mud box, I created a rough shape from a cube…

I then brought the model into maya, where I started applying the techniques from the link above, but also making a few adjustments of my own to fit the requirements of what Black North were asking for…

first render:

I felt that the render above was a little plain looking.. there was no colour, nothing interesting about it, so I tried to change that. I duplicated the model and resized it so it would fit inside itself, then changed the colour of this smaller model to a light blue and gave it a slightly brighter ambient colour, in the hope that the extra light might bounce around a little inside the larger object. The transparency of the object was also adjusted to make it more solid/ visible through the first model.

I still wasn’t happy with the colour, there was too much blue – no other colours were present, so in an attempt to fix that I placed a cube inside the smaller model, which was less transparent than the others and I gave it a grey colour. Im a bit happier with the render below as now there are a couple of colours bouncing around.

We then received a message from the guys at Black North to say that the game had been changed and could we create a new level based on the new designs, giving us 4 days to create the level so it was going to be a bit tight with time. The file below is the example we were given…

This time our set would be 7 tiles that would join together (we will create one each.) This time the models were to be as low a polycount as possible, this being the main reason the game was changed, and we would still be sticking with the ice environment.

I started off by modelling an environment in mud box…

which I then brought into maya and retopologised using the quad draw tool (remembering not to press three to smooth the model as it will be taken into soft image when we pass it on) :

Unwrapped the UV’s by firstly unwrapping using the best plane, decided where my seams would be and cut the UV edges before finally using the 3D unwrap tool. These UV’s were obviously a lot easier to unwrap compared to the previous set…

This time regarding textures were decided we would go for more ice rather than rock and snow, seeing as the panels looked like they were some sort of cave. Below are some of the textures I experimented with…

Before settling with the textures below:

Originally I had ice walls and banks of snow at each side but it just didn’t look right, so I switched it to be snow walls with banks of ice which just in general a lot better.

The ambient occlusion was baked in:

And multiplied over the textures in photoshop:

A normal map was also created using crazy bump:

Then it was onto lighting the scene, I added an ambient light with a rather low intensity to give some basic light. I wanted my light source to be coming form the ice.. as if it was giving off light that was then being reflected by other bits of ice. So to create this I added in a few spot lights, all different in size (penumbria and cone angle) intensity and colour giving the results below.

Once I (and the rest of the team of course) were happy with the lighting, the light and colour were baked in:

After having a class where we concentrated on Maya’s particles and what can be achieved from them: things such as a drip running down the side of a coke can and rain, the particles can be set to streaks to give the effect of rain. I wondered could I create this effect, including having the rain collide with a ground plane so I headed to youtube and found the tutorial below:

After watching the tutorial I then opened maya and had a go…

I then experimented with a turbulence field, to remove the uniform look of the rainfall, but I think I actually prefer the uniform look…

As I liked the uniform look I also experimented with adding an air field…

Over easter while I was working on some animations I decided I wanted to take a break from them and try something else, I fancied doing some modelling but didn’t know what to model, then I realised I was sitting at my desk…

I started off with the desk…

Also attached to my desk is a magnetic board and a CD rack, I then modelled these features and added them to the desk:

The my monitor and speakers, including the cable coming from the speakers:

I then started to fill the CD rack, will something similar to the photo at the beginning of this post, to get the draping of the paper I made the geometry an Ncloth and anything it collides with a collider, I then played the simulation until I found a shape that I liked. While the simulation was paused I duplicated the geometry and then deleted the cloth attributes:

Below the cd rack, again I used Maya’s Ncloth to create the realistic shapes of the paper:

One of the more challenging features was the desk lamp:

There’s also a little pot of stationary that sits behind my laptop:

my laptop, complete with a USB pen:

Also through the use of dynamics I created the object that hangs from my lamp:

I also then connected my monitor and laptop by modelling an hdmi cable, all cables were modelled using the tutorial below:

After having a class where we looked at Maya’s 2D and 3D fluid effects, I decided i would experiment with Bifrost, again keeping my showreel in mind…

the first thing I attempted was running water:

The tutorial above showed me how to set up the liquid and also the geometry it would collide with, along with the lighting for the scene. I then decided I didn’t really want the water to be appearing from nowhere, I modelled and textured a tap so that the water had somewhere to come from…

Another render:

I also thought my showreel could do with something a little more exciting than just running water, so I’ve also attempted a splash, which I feel is an improvement on the running water, this time the liquid acts a lot more like water as this time I experimented a lot more with the liquids attributes. The set up for the splash was pretty much the same as the tutorial above, I created a box that would hold the liquid, a box form which the liquid would be emitted and an object to fall into the liquid creating the splash… I found that a long, thin cube created a much more dramatic splash than just a sphere. These objects were then set as colliders and the cube animated to fall into the water…

After having a class on Maya’s particles, I decided to experiment with the N-cloth feature, hoping to created something that I could put into my showreel. I had recently been watching an episode of ABC’s ‘Once Upon A Time’ (when am I not watching that programme…?) where the two clips below appeared (Smash the Mirror 4×08) and I was inspired to try something similar:

I really liked the effect of the particles moving through the air and the cracking effect created within the eye of the actress. Although I was after an effect similar to the clip below, how the particles were controlled:

I decided that I would try something similar to this effect using a head model that I had retopologised so that it would be useable. Using Maya’s Ncloth and a vortex field I created the effect below:

After a class on Maya’s particles and emitters, I decided I wanted to include some more dynamics work in my showreel, so I watched a couple of tutorials and decided to experiment with particles…
Using Maya’s mo-cap characters I created the scenes below:

Firstly I had one of the characters run and leave a trail of particles behind it…

I then had the same character run, hit the wall and explode into particles…

Finally I then had two runners run at one another before exploding into particles, I thought this would be the better of the three to render out. Before rendering I added in a camera movement to make it a little more exiting, along with giving the floor a reflective material to make it more appealing to the eye…